Foundational Sites and Occupied Spaces

This lecture by W.J.T. Mitchell examines the relationship between foundational sites —places where an institution, movement, or historical epoch locates its origins, and the notion of occupied spaces, including the sorts of occupation associated with conquest and colonization, on the one hand, and the liberatory forms of political and civil disobedience associated with the Occupy Movement, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, on the other.

W.J.T. Mitchell is an art historian, Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago, and editor of Critical Inquiry. A scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature, he is associated with the fields of visual culture and iconology (the study of images across the media) and is known for his work on the relations of visual and verbal representations in the context of social and political issues. He is the author of What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (2004).